I have published five books and many articles on German history at the time of the world wars. My third book Hitler’s African Victims (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [hardcover] and 2008 [paperback]) was translated into French (2007) and German (2009). The book sparked an investigation by the German office for Nazi crimes, and I was interviewed for the documentary “Les 43 tirailleurs” (by Mireille Hannon) in 2010 and by C-SPAN’s book tv program in September 2012. My fifth book, French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II (Cambridge University Press, December 2014), deals with French colonial prisoners of war in German POW camps, 1940-45, examining the conditions of their captivity, the struggle of the German and French authorities for the loyalty of these prisoners, and the influence of the prisoners’ experiences on the postwar move toward independence in the colonies. My next project deals with love relations of French prisoners of war and German women during the Second World War as well as with larger issues concerning POWs and civilian internees (legal, social, diplomatic, economic).

In 2011, I identified an anonymous manuscript of a Senegalese soldier in German captivity as having been written by Léopold Sédar Senghor, the eminent French-Senegalese poet, cultural philosopher, and first president of the Republic of Senegal (1960-1980). The French newspaper Le Monde and the magazine Jeune Afrique interviewed me about this discovery, as did the Colby Magazine and French journalist Ivan Amar (for Radio France Internationale).

I was born in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) and grew up in Germany, Israel, and (mostly) in Switzerland (first in Geneva, later near Zürich). I started out as a cello student at the conservatory in Zürich but then decided to study History at the University of Zürich and Brandeis University (USA). I have a Habilitation Degree from the University of Basel (2003). I am a German citizen (I point this out because French newspapers discussing my book on the massacres of black French soldiers often argued that it took an “American” historian to uncover this crime). Since 1994, I have taught modern European and German history at Colby College, where I also served as chair of the History Department for two terms (2000-2003 and 2005-2008) and as director of the Jewish Studies program (2011-14).